Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:^[267]

“Nations sustain the relations of savages to each other....

“No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors, the cruelties, of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through the bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the mutilated, the mangled!...”

Let the working class mothers beware of crafty and cowardly politicians and business men seeking to excite them with the shallow cry: “The flag! Our country! Our homes!” For the mothers’ sake it is worth the space to restate the fact here: That more than half of all the mothers in the United States have no homes of their own and must live in rented homes, and more than one-eighth of them live in mortgaged homes.^[268] And vast numbers of the mothers in the United States live in mean, small houses with scarcely a single modern convenience.

Mothers, keep your eyes on the bankers and the manufacturers and the other “leading citizens”: they and their sons and sons-in-law are not shedding a large quantity of their “blue” blood for “our” country and “our” homes and “our” flag; and they can not be wheedled into doing so. Watch them closely, mothers, both before a war and during a war. Don’t get excited. Remember Christ’s “Put up thy sword.”

St. Paul said, “Follow peace with all men.”

You have heard of this doctrine: “Thou shalt not kill.”

“War has no pity,” said Schiller.

“God is forgotten in war, and every principle of Christianity is trampled under foot,” said Sidney Smith.

“War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion ... it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it.... Cannon and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines.”—Martin Luther.

The gentle and charming lover of little children, Eugene Field, wrote: “I hate wars, armies, soldiers, guns, and fireworks.”^[269]

“And he shall judge among the nations, and he shall rebuke many people. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”^[270]

James Russell Lowell:^[271]

And Tolstoi thus:^[272]

“Every war—even the briefest—with its accompaniment of ruinous expenses, destruction of harvests, thefts, plunder, murders, and unchecked debauchery, with the false justifications of its necessity and justice, the glorification and praise of military exploits, of patriotism and devotion to the flag, with the pretense of care for the wounded, etc.,—will, in one year, demoralize men incomparably more than thousands of thefts, arsons and murders committed in the course of centuries by individual men under the influence of passion.”

Let the women’s literary clubs and circles, many of them devotees of John Ruskin, consider the following lines from his pen:^[273]

“But Occult Theft—Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,—corrupts the body and soul of man, and to the last fibre of them. And the guilty thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists,—that is to say, those who live by percentages on the labor of others.—The Real war in Europe—is between these thieves and the workman, such as these thieves have made him. They have kept him poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might without his knowledge gather for themselves the produce of his toil. At last a dim insight into the fact of this begins to dawn upon him.”

As to thieves: Think of stealing several years of a man’s life when he is in the prime of young manhood, by tearing him from his own friends and loved ones, forcing a rifle into his hands, and compelling him for years to learn the vile science and art of human butchery. Thus are the best years of millions of the choicest young men in Europe stolen—stolen by a class,—a class of prominent kidnappers, industrial and political thieves, “leading citizens” hypocritically wearing a mask called “Patriotism.” Think of many millions thus stolen—stolen from their parents, stolen from their brothers and sisters, stolen from their wives and children.

When the working class think about war and see the vast theft of their lives they will astound the world with their protest.

And the mothers will take part in this protest.

(14) Didn’t Christ say in substance: “I came not to send peace, but a sword?”

Yes. At least that is what some of the gentle Christ’s followers are said to have reported that they heard he had been reported to have been heard to say. And it is true, too, that tyrants, hypocritically mumbling interpolated malignance ascribed to Christ, draw the sword to combat the brotherhood of man—as, doubtless, Christ expected they would do. But it is worse than blasphemous nonsense to teach children—young or old—that Christ, the Great Lover of Mankind, was a cheap jingoist, recommended the sword and counseled wholesale butchery of brothers by brothers. The distinguished intellectual prostitutes who argue Christ into the same butchers’ list with Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and the Tough Rider, are pridelessly down on their faces in the dust cringing before their industrial masters; they are simply betraying Christ again for “thirty pieces” of blood-stained silver called salaries.^[274]

Christ, according to the reports, also said: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Also: “Ye have heard it hath been said: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you: ‘That ye resist not evil.’” And this: “They that take up the sword, shall by the sword perish.”

And this on authority: “Thou shalt not steal.”

One of the most eminent bishops in the United States went, in the winter of 1907–8, before a Congressional Committee and argued eloquently for a large cash donation from Congress for a certain “boys’ academy” managed by his church. His chief argument was that the little fellows “are carefully trained in the use of arms and would be ready for use in case of trouble.”

Many schools thus prepare boys to murder hungry working men who are out on strike for a few pennies a day to feed their families—which is a “case of trouble.” Now imagine Christ training tender boys for human butchery and teasing the brutal government of his time for cash with which to buy spears and swords for the children!

“There is a powerful section of the Christian church which teaches its entire membership that the Church has a right to exempt them—the clergy—from the usual duties of citizenship, and especially from military duty.”^[275]

Now, it does not matter what church we may or may not be members of, all the men and all the women of the working class—in all the churches and out of the churches—should band together in a world-wide fellowship and effort of the working class to drive war from the world and thus protect the helpless women and children. Remember, mothers, it is not fair that your husbands and sons should be torn from your homes, have cruel rifles thrust into their hands, and be forced into a war where they may be destroyed,—and you be thus widowed and your younger children be left fatherless; and, at the same time, the minister who by prayer and public speech exerted powerful influence to bring about the war,—that he should be exempted from the horrors of the battlefield, the horrors up close, where human blood and brains are pounded into the mud by cannon balls and the hoofs of horses. Remember, too, that tens of thousands of ministers have no wives and no children to be desolated. Does it not seem rather that these wifeless, childless men who want war should themselves go to the war instead of having your lovers go?

It should be repeated:

No matter what denomination they belong to, those men who pray for war or pray for victories in war, or help train boys for war—those men should go and fight the war.

If a war is good enough to pray for it is good enough to go to. Those who want “great victories” should be forced to go after them, right up to the front too, where cannon shells burst striking hundreds with death—up to the front, into “hell’s hurricanes.”

How does this matter seem to you, mother? Won’t you think it over and bring up the subject for friendly and earnest discussion in your community? Why not urge all women everywhere to take up this subject—and thus chain the attention of society to this subject of the degradation and slaughter of the men you love?

(15) In The Westminster Review of July, 1907, is the following suggestion of a topic suitable for discussion in women’s societies and newspapers:

“There is another insidious form of Militarism that is very widespread and popular. I refer to the Lads’ Brigades [in England] which are attached to so many churches of different denominations. Under pretext of giving them physical training, boys are taught the spirit of submission to another’s will, and to love the trappings of Militarism.... This coupling together of military training with religion has been well described by the Rev. Dr. Aked of Liverpool [now of New York], as ‘preaching heaven and practicing hell.’”

The American mother can not solace herself with the thought that what Dr. Aked referred to was a practice in far-away England and does not much concern her. For this new crucifixion of Jesus and the degradation of the little boys, a strong society exists in the United States. The United Boys’ Brigade is an organization for training the trigger-fingers and the blood-lusts of boys nine years and upward in the basement rooms of Christian churches. “The object of the organization,” as announced in the monthly magazine of the organization, The American Brigadier, is “to ... promote reverence and discipline ... to create in them a love for their country ... and while the boys are thoroughly drilled in military discipline and tactics, it only serves to make them true Christian soldiers.”^[276] The American Brigadier announces officially that “there is nothing equal to it in drawing them into the Sabbath School.” Thus the church is to be made like a prize-fighting ring in order to make it look good to the little boys. The American Brigadier, of December, 1907, gives away its secret in a lengthy account, headed, “Securing a New Recruit,” as follows:

(One boy says to another): “We go to Bible drill every Saturday night and have setting-up exercises and Bible drill, and sometimes we visit other companies. Gee! but our company can show them how to drill. And we go camping in summer, and we have a bully time.... Bible drill?... Gee! but there are some bully stories in the Bible.... We read about Samson, the strong man that beat Sandow all hollow, and King David, the siege of Jericho, and last week we read about a shepherd boy killing a giant with a sling-shot....”

In The Brigadier of November, 1907, is an article, “What it Means to be a Soldier,” in which is the following:

“There is but one word that covers all, and that is obedience: obedience to orders and strict discipline. The foundation of all military organizations rests upon this one basis.”

Precisely: obedience.

That is to say, an innocent little fellow who has been drilled thus for several years to forget that he has a brain and a will of his own, drilled to obey all orders instantly—such a boy at the age of twenty will, of course, automatically and stupidly obey any order—no matter how vile—even the order: “Fire! Charge!”—though “the enemy,” the target, be little silk-mill wage-slave girls ten or twelve years old who must toil a whole week for $1.60, and are out on strike for a dime more per week, and while out on strike are starved into being “riotous.”

Armed rowdies—with riot guns—for starving, “rioting” children!

The American Brigadier is primarily a religious magazine, so they say; but it offers a breech-loading Springfield rifle as a premium to the boy who will send in the most subscribers. Imagine Christ making his cause popular with little boys by offering them a weapon with which to murder! The Brigadier wins the boys to Jesus by seductively baiting the savage that still lurks in the “civilized” breast; the magazine gives pictures of armories, battle monuments, gun drills, military parades, camp life, gay military uniforms, little boys with guns, swords, tents, banners, cannon, pictures also of pompous-looking, gilt-braided “big men,” famous professional human butchers. The magazine prints alluring stories of army-and-navy life; and makes a specialty of advertising military arms, military clothing, West Point story books, and so forth.

This organization works in and through the church. It is strong and is gaining ground. It boasts of having branches in many states. In the “City of Churches,” Brooklyn, N. Y., the society is specially strong. Much of the military drill work is done openly in the streets, when the weather permits. Many pastors, “in the name of Jesus,” of course, are energetically—and patriotically—hustling for the movement, some of them proudly (and craftily) having their pictures taken with the training companies. The pastors’ poses in these pictures make the pastors look like valuable assets to the capitalists of their churches, but the poses somehow do not suggest the quiet and gentle Jesus. “Put up thy sword” is out of date with these kerosened procurers political.^[277]

There are many thousands of innocent little church boys thus in training. October 5, 1907, twenty-five hundred of these little fellows marched on Fifth Avenue, New York City, carrying guns and swords, four of the betrayed children dragging a light cannon.

The Federal Government at Washington, by a “judicious mingling” of winks and smiles, is heartily encouraging this “Christian soldier” enterprise. Says the Commander-in-Chief, H. B. Pope, in his Report:^[278]

“In general ... it can be said that in the quarters where we have desired to obtain recognition, our influence is greater, and the respect tendered to us is much more cordial than ever before. Our own Government has paid special attention in several directions to the work of this organization ... and our development [is] carefully followed by those highest in authority, who appreciate the possibilities of the splendid soldiery which the organization is making, should the necessity ever arise when this body might be needed [in a strike for example].... Drill should never be allowed to take the place of religious exercises. At the same time a judicious mingling of both constitutes means through which we can obtain highest results.”

And the following is from a report on a meeting of the organization held in Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, May 13, 1907:

“There were also present a number of Army Officers, National Guard officers and veterans of the Civil War.... The Church was beautifully decorated with flags.... General Campbell presided and presented messages of good will and good wishes from the President of the United States, from Colonel Fred Grant ... and from many other influential men.”

How interestingly consistent—“Good will and good wishes” from the presidential chairman of the executive committee of the capitalist class in America; that is, the National Government,—“good will and good wishes” to the seducers of small boys to serve as fist and tusk for the ruling class.

The “Boy Scout” movement is the latest manifestation of this christened and kerosened cunning to seduce the innocent small boys for the blood-and-iron embrace of Mars and Mammon. Mothers, take notice. Be warned. Defend yourselves.

President Roosevelt (international mentor) also furnished bewildering flattery to the boys themselves who show skill in the use of the deadly rifle. The Philadelphia Public Ledger, and many other newspapers about the same date, July 16, 1907, printed the following cunning letter written by President Roosevelt to a Brooklyn school boy. The news item with the letter runs thus:

“Oyster Bay, July 17. President Roosevelt has put his hearty approval on public school rifle practice. In a letter of congratulation to Ambrose Scharfenberg, of Brooklyn, winner of the shooting trophy of the Public School Athletic League, he takes occasion to encourage the system of rifle practice inaugurated by General George B. Wingate, retired.

“That the letter to young Scharfenberg may have as far-reaching influence as possible, it was made public at the President’s direction today. It is as follows:

“‘My Dear Young Friend:—I heartily congratulate you upon being declared by the Public School Athletic League to stand first in rifle shooting among all the boys of the High Schools of New York City who have tried during the last year. Many a grown man who regards himself as a crack rifle shot would be proud of such a score. Your skill is a credit to you, and also to your principal, your teachers, and to all connected with the manual training school which you attend, and I know them all. [The usual diffident confession of omniscience.]

“‘Practice in rifle shooting is of value in developing not only muscles, but nerves.... It is a prime necessity that the volunteer should already know how to shoot.... The graduates from our schools and colleges should be thus trained so as to be good shots with the military rifle. When so trained they constitute a great addition to our national strength and great assurance for the peace of the country.’”

That is to say: Tho’ the capitalists should refuse to employ 5,000,000 men and virtually spit in their faces and order these willing-to-work men out of the factories and mines to shiver and starve in rags, and thus infinitely humiliate millions of working class wives and daughters with the terrors of poverty—no matter, the rifle-practiced graduates of high schools, colleges and universities will be “ready for use,” ready to crush the unemployed if they loudly protest, ready to help the master class thrust all the injustices of a class-labor system into the lives of the working class, ready to thrust bayonets into the out-of-work wage-slaves who cry aloud for work, for bread, for justice in the industrial civil war of capitalism.

Bright and early every school day, in New York City, about 600,000 children are compelled to salute the flag and recite some mocking lies about the “glorious freedom they have” and the “bounteous blessings they enjoy”—under the “friendly folds of the Stars and Stripes”—tho’ a whole half million of the children have no homes of their own and in a hundred ways are stung with the lash of poverty.

(17) Many additional instructors in military tactics have in recent years been appointed to service in high schools, colleges and universities. United States Army officers are now in ninety-three universities, colleges and schools, drilling 22,910 students in “military departments.”

Improved rifles, riot cartridges, and killing equipment are being distributed among the State militia forces; local armories are being improved and made attractive,—all made “ready for use” when needed to pacify the out-of-work wage-earners. Recently in one State, Colorado, military training was being systematically taught in the high schools of six of the largest cities. The Secretary of War in 1909 reported forty-four schoolboy rifle clubs. In the newspapers and magazines, in the sermons and speeches and especially in the public school,—by all such means—the size and perfection of rifles, cannon, battleships and the like, are held up to the children for their admiration and as evidences of our superiority and of our “splendid civilization.” The children are taught to clap their hands for our readiness to engage in some great international butchering contest. But the children are not taught what arsenals, armories, cannon, rifles, soldiers, militia, riot guns and riot cartridges—what all these things mean and what war means for the working class. Never!

(18) Let a philosopher speak to the mother and her children in plain language:

“Europe is still in arms: each nation watching every other with suspicion, jealousy, or menace.... And what is the result? Russia overwhelmed with a military cancer, a prey to social confusion such as has not been seen in this century. Germany, with her intelligence and industry, bound in the fetters of military service, governed as if she were a camp, as if the sole object of peace were to prepare for war. France staggering.... Italy weighted with a useless army, uneasy, intriguing, restless.... Spain weak from the drain of a series of wars.... England uncertain, divided in action, continually distracted and dishonored by an endless succession of miserable wars in every quarter of the globe.

“Such is the picture of Europe after a generation of imperialism and aggressive war.

“Who is the gainer? Is the poor Russian moujic, torn from his home to die in Central Asia or on the passes of the Balkans, doomed to a government of ever deepening corruption and tyranny? Is the workman of Berlin the better, crushed by military oppression and industrial recklessness? Who is the gainer—the ruler or the ruled? Is the French peasant the gainer now that Alsace and Lorraine are gone, and nothing exists of the empire but its debt, its conspirators, and its legacy of confusions?

“... Who is the gainer by this career of bloodshed and ambition?... We hear the groans of the millions—the working, suffering millions—who are yearning to replace this cruel system, none of their making, none of their choice, by which they gain nothing, from which they hope nothing.”^[279]

Who indeed is the gainer? The workers lose; and the mothers lose most of all—their children. Yet everywhere complete contempt for the working class mothers of the whole world, absolute scorn for the blood of men and the tears of women—of the working class.

What magnificent protest will roll round this world when the working class is roused to think of these things!

(19) In the dollar-hunting spirit of the age it may be inquired: Doesn’t war make business brisk, and thus furnish work for the wage-earners?

Yes, certainly. But so also would a lunatic in the streets armed with a repeating shotgun shooting down the children at play: he would make business brisk for the coffin trust, the undertakers and their employees—and the grave-digger.

(20) Following are several special suggestions for the mothers and fathers of the working class:

(1) Teach the children anti-war recitations and declamations.

Faithfully and patiently help the boys and girls master a half dozen or more passages of the strongest prose and poetry to be found against war; help them in this work till they understand—till their eyes kindle, till their hearts burn, till their imagination is aflame with disgust and detestation for war and for the foul rôle of the armed guard of the ruling class. (See page 350, last two lines.)

(2) Teach the children the pledge on the first page of Chapter One of the present volume. Teach them to teach that pledge, or some similar pledge, to other children.

(3) Teach the boys and girls the historical origin of the working class. (See Chapter Eleven.)

(4) Explain to the boys and girls, page by page, all of Chapter Ten, and urge them to explain the matter to other children.

(5) Patiently and clearly explain the meaning and the purpose of the local militia and the army.

(6) Interest the children in a circulating anti-war library, and co-operate with them in promoting the enterprise.

(7) A Ten-Dollar Cash Prize for the best definition of a militiaman who is willing to shoot the fathers and brothers of the little working class children of his neighborhood when those fathers and brothers are on strike struggling to better the condition of the mothers and the children—such a prize contest would induce a great amount of helpful thoughtfulness and discussion.

(8) Further suggestions will be found at the opening of Chapter Twelve. See also Index: “Suggestions.”

(21) Following are several passages suitable for children as declamations. Also see Index, “Declamations.”

(A) The Soldier’s Creed:^[280]

(B) Robert G. Ingersoll’s Musings at the Tomb of Napoleon:^[281]

“A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.

“I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.

“I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who had ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knee and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great.”

(C) Victor Hugo’s Reflections on War:^[282]

“The antique violence of the few against all, called right divine, is nearing its end.... A stammering, which tomorrow will be speech, and the day after tomorrow a gospel, proceeds from the bruised lips of the serf, of the vassal, of the laboring man, of the pariah. The gag is breaking between the teeth of the human race. The patient human race has had enough of the path of sorrow, and refuses to go farther.... Glory advertised by drumbeats is met with a shrug of the shoulder. These sonorous heroes have, up to the present day, deafened human reason, which begins to be fatigued by this majestic uproar. Reason stops eyes and ears before those authorized butcheries called battles. The sublime cut-throats have had their day.... Humanity, having grown older, asks to be relieved of them. The cannon’s prey has begun to think, and, thinking twice, loses its admiration for being made a target.”

“Whoever says today, ‘might makes right,’ performs an act of the Middle Ages, and speaks to men a hundred years behind their times. Gentlemen, the nineteenth century glorifies the eighteenth century. The eighteenth proposed, the nineteenth concludes. And my last word shall be a declaration, tranquil but inflexible, of progress.

“The time has come. Right has found its formula:—human federation.

“Today force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors and captains. The Witness, History, is summoned. The reality appears. The fictitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many cases, the hero is a species of assassin. The people begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime can not be its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much can not be an extenuating circumstance; that if to steal is a shame, to invade can not be a glory; that Te Deums do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call one’s self Caesar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God, the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallow’s cap, there is placed upon the head an Emperor’s crown.

“Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious war does not exist. No; it is not good, and it is not useful, to make corpses. No; it can not be that life travails for death. No; O, mothers who surround me, it can not be that war, the robber, should continue to take from you your children. No; it can not be that women should bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should, in the presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all to result in that frightful international exposition called war.”

(D) Ingersoll’s Vision of War:^[283]

“The past rises before me like a dream.... We hear the sound of preparation, the music of boisterous drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men, and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more.... We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing the babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses—the divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves—and she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone,—and forever....

“We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields—in all the hospitals of pain—on all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood—in the furrows of old fields.... We see them pierced by balls and torn with shell, in the trenches, by the forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge....

“We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief....

“They sleep ... under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willow and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest....”

(E) Ingersoll’s Vision of the Future.^[284]

“A vision of the future rises: ... I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

“I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.

“I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet’s shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl, trying to win bread with a needle—the needle that has been called ‘the asp for the breast of the poor,’—is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.

“I see a world without the beggar’s outstretched palm, the miser’s heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

“I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function, and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope.”

These golden words, these words of immortal beauty, are, “like love, wine for the heart and brain.” They fire the soul, especially the mother’s soul, with a glorious joy, a splendid vision of unstained, untroubled pleasure: Mankind at Peace—Socialized. The children safe. The future vast and beautiful and kind for her and for those that call her Mother.

But again and yet again the cannon’s roar will banish the vision. The future holds agony for the mother, especially for the humble mother in the working class. Her husband and her older sons will go to war. They will even thoughtlessly sink to the level of joining the local militia for local war—for strike service. The men she loves have been poisoned—poisoned with the base teaching that brutality is bravery, that the drawn sword marks the patriot. They are ready, ready now, at the word of command from a cheap commander to murder the men of their own class, and break the hearts and mock the tears of the wage-slave mothers of the world.

These mothers must defend themselves—for the present.

These mothers can defend themselves only through their younger sons and daughters—by teaching them a class loyalty which is a new patriotism that will close the local armory, shame the assassin back to the factory, to the farm, to the mine, and silence all the cannon on all the earth.